"I always loved 'At evening time it shall be light,' and I am sure it comes true to many a young troubled soul, which in its youthful zeal and impatience cannot help eating its heart out over its own and other people's failings and imperfections, and has not yet learnt the patience which comes from realising that in this world we see but the beginning of things."

Aspiration

NOVEMBER 2

"If a man constantly aspires, is he not elevated?"

Thoreau.

"The thing we long for,—That we are
For one transcendent moment!
Before the Present, poor and bare,
Can make its sneering comment!
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Longing is God's fresh heavenward will
With our poor earthward striving;
We quench it that we may be still
Content with merely living;
But would we learn that heart's full scope
Which we are hourly wronging,
Our lives must climb from hope to hope
And realise our longing!
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Ah! let us hope that to our praise
Good God not only reckons
The moments when we tread His ways,
But when the spirit beckons—
That some slight good is also wrought
Beyond self-satisfaction,
When we are simply good in thought,
Howe'er we fail in action."

Lowell.

There shall never be one Lost Good

NOVEMBER 3

"Therefore to whom turn I but to Thee, the ineffable Name?
Builder and Maker, Thou, of houses not made with hands!
What, have fear of change from Thee Who art ever the same?
Doubt that Thy power can fill the heart that Thy power expands?
There shall never be one lost good! What was shall live as before;
The evil is null, is nought, is silence implying sound;
What was good, shall be good, with, for evil, so much good more;
On the earth the broken arcs; in the heaven a perfect round.
All we have willed or hoped or dreamed of good, shall exist,
Not its semblance, but itself; no beauty, nor good, nor power
Whose voice has gone forth, but each survives for the melodist,
When eternity confirms the conception of an hour.
The high that proved too high, the heroic for earth too hard,
The passion that left the ground to lose itself in the sky,
Are music sent up to God by the lover and the bard;
Enough that He heard it once; we shall hear it by-and-bye."